Warwickshire’s Metro Bank One-Day Cup campaign goes back on the road tomorrow when a visit to Somerset starts a string of three away games.
After a resoundingly successful Rugby Festival, sunshine-blessed and well-attended, the Bears’ group trail now turns peripatetic. Following a trip south to Taunton tomorrow, they head north later in the week when they face Lancashire at Liverpool on Friday and Durham at Chester-le-Street on Sunday.
The Bears are aiming for a strong points haul from those games before they return to Edgbaston for the final group fixture against Sussex on Tuesday 26th.
The group is wide open at the halfway stage with just six points separating eight of the nine teams. The Bears sit fourth, having won two of their three games at Rugby, and Ian Westwood’s side will be looking to bounce back at Taunton after yesterday’s 28-run defeat to Middlesex.
“We enjoyed our time at Rugby but were pretty disappointed not to chase that score down against Middlesex and make it three wins out of three,” he said. “It was not an easy pitch for batting and credit to them, they fought hard, bowled well and made it difficult for us, but you’d hope we had enough skill and quality to get those runs.
“Now we are back on the road and it will be nice to go to Taunton and have a run out there ahead of going back there for the Blast quarter-final next month. It will be a tough game because they have got some good depth but we are looking forward to hitting the road now with everything still to play for in the group.”
Westwood and captain Ed Barnard will continue to think hard about team selection, juggling the quest to go far in the competition with the need to keep players fresh and fit with some big games to comes in all formats in the last six weeks of the season.
“It is a balancing act,” the coach said. “We are trying to keep all the seamers fresh and Michael Booth is coming back from long-term injury so we are trying to manage him – he won’t be able to play all the games. We haven’t got loads of options to come in and people like Ed Barnard and Alex Davies have played every game of cricket this year so are pretty tired. They are keen to keep going, so we will keep making our best judgment of how to keep the lads fresh alongside our desire to do really well in the competition.”